Kimberly-Clark
Consumer Staples
66
out of 100. Number 73 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Kimberly-Clark does well
- Renewals 2 of 20. Few problems found.
- 'We do not sell your personal information in exchange for monetary consideration without your consent.'
- Accounts registered to users under 16 are automatically opted out of sale/sharing of personal information, and the company obtains verified parental consent before collecting data from children under 13 in the U.S.
- Published transparency metrics: 107 'Do Not Sell or Share' requests received Jan.–Dec. 2025, all complied with in whole or part, 0 denied, mean response time 10 days.
- Commits to verifying that law enforcement follows proper legal procedures before responding to requests for sensitive personal information and to making 'reasonable challenges to such requests.'
- No discrimination for exercising privacy rights: 'If you exercise any of these choices and rights, we will not disadvantage you. You will not be denied or charged different prices or rates for goods or services.'
- Supports Global Privacy Control browser signals as an opt-out method.
By merely visiting a Kimberly-Clark site (Huggies, Kleenex, Kotex, etc.) you give up your right to sue them in court, join a class action, or get a jury trial.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
-
By merely visiting a Kimberly-Clark site (Huggies, Kleenex, Kotex, etc.) you give up your right to sue them in court, join a class action, or get a jury trial. Any dispute goes to a private arbitrator in Neenah, Wisconsin under Wisconsin law, and you must file within one year or lose the claim forever. There is no opt-out. Kimberly-Clark, meanwhile, reserves the right to run to court for emergency injunctions against you without posting bond.
Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to any Sites, these Terms, any applicable Additional Terms, and the Privacy Statement, or breach thereof... will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Wisconsin... and will be settled by binding arbitration in Neenah, Wisconsin under the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"). ... NEITHER PARTY WILL PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION OR CLASS-WIDE ARBITRATION FOR ANY CLAIMS RELATED TO ANY SITES, THESE TERMS, ANY ADDITIONAL TERMS OR THE PRIVACY STATEMENT. ANY DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCEEDING WILL BE CONDUCTED ONLY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT IN A CLASS, CONSOLIDATED OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. ... EACH PARTY WAIVES, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, ANY RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY IN ANY ACTION, SUIT, CLAIM OR PROCEEDING... Except if you are a resident of New Jersey, you and K-C also agree that any cause of action arising out of or related to the Sites must commence within one (1) year after the cause of action accrues. Otherwise, such cause of action is permanently barred.
Terms and Conditions - USA (Section XVI: Governing Law; Dispute Resolution and Binding Arbitration)
-
Kimberly-Clark admits its ad-tech deals count as legally-defined 'sales' and 'sharing' of your data. Your identifiers, purchase history, browsing activity, and inferred profiles about you have been handed to advertising networks, analytics firms, social networks, and data brokers — including protected-class data (race, religion, health condition, disability, citizenship), geolocation, sensory, employment, and education information in its broader disclosures. No money changes hands, but your data is still sold.
We may allow certain third parties (such as online advertising services) to collect your personal information via automated technologies on our Site in exchange for non-monetary consideration... which may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" under California law. ... During the 12-month period prior to the effective date of this Statement, we may have sold or shared the following categories of personal information: Identifiers | Advertising networks, data analytics providers, social networks, data broker. Commercial Information | Advertising networks, data analytics providers, social networks, data broker. Online Activity | Advertising networks, data analytics providers, social networks, data broker. Inferences | Advertising networks, data analytics providers, social networks, data broker.
Global Privacy Policy (U.S. State-Specific Disclosures / Notice of Collection)
-
Because Kimberly-Clark's products are diapers, menstrual products, and incontinence products, its sites routinely collect intimate health data: pregnancy, allergies, menstruation, and incontinence — plus race and ethnicity — and build inferred profiles of your health, behavior, and characteristics from it.
For the purposes of processing listed in this Policy, we (or our partners) may collect and process sensitive personal information. This may include information such as your race, ethnicity, date of birth, or data related to your use of our Site or products associated with health status, such as pregnancy, allergies (e.g., allergy trigger quizzes), menstruation (e.g., period calculators), or incontinence. We may also make inferences about your preferences, behaviors, characteristics, health, or attributes related to your use of our Site or products where permitted by applicable law.
-
Anything you post or submit on Kimberly-Clark's sites — reviews, photos, ideas, suggestions — becomes theirs to keep, sell, sublicense to third parties, and modify, forever, with no payment to you. All submissions are deemed non-confidential, and you give up moral rights in them.
You hereby grant K-C a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, publish, sell, disclose, or otherwise use that User Submission for any purpose whatsoever in any and all media now known or hereinafter developed without the requirement to make payment to you or to any third party... including without limitation for advertising, promoting and redistributing... You hereby further grant us the perpetual, irrevocable... right to use any ideas, concepts, or techniques embodied in such User Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, and hereby waive any and all moral rights you may have in any such User Submissions.
-
Kimberly-Clark can rewrite these terms or the privacy policy whenever it wants, with no notice to you — not even an email. Just visiting the site after a change means you legally accepted it.
K-C reserves the right at its discretion to change, modify, add or remove portions of the Terms, any Additional Terms, and/or the Privacy Statement at any time. Please check these Terms, any Additional Terms, and the Privacy Statement periodically for changes. Your continued use of the Sites following the posting of changes to these Terms, any Additional Terms, and/or the Privacy Statement will mean you acknowledge and accept those changes.
-
Your personal data can linger for a decade after you stop doing business with Kimberly-Clark (10 years for contractual purposes, 24 months for marketing), while at the same time the company can instantly delete your account and all your files without notice if it decides to cut you off.
Retention Period. We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which the personal information was collected as outlined in this Policy. ... Contractual purposes: retained during the provision of the Site plus a period of 10 years after the termination or withdrawal of such contract... Marketing purposes: retained for a period of 24 months after your relationship with us ends or until you withdraw your consent. ... K-C may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all related information and files in your account and/or bar any further access to such files or the Sites.
How these were found
Documents read directly from official kimberly-clark.com pages on Oct 1, 2026 — no mirrors needed. Terms: the 'Terms and Conditions - USA' page was served from https://www.kimberly-clark.com/en-ca/terms-and-conditions-en-us (an en-ca path rendering the USA terms); no 'last updated' date was visible on the fetched page. Note: the preamble warns of binding arbitration 'in Section 10,' but in the fetched document's Roman-numeral numbering the arbitration provision appears as Section XVI (content matches). Privacy: Global Privacy Policy at https://www.kimberly-clark.com/global-privacy-policy; page did not display a visible last-updated date in fetched text (search metadata indicated a recent update ~early 2026; the Australia variant showed 'Last Updated: April 08, 2026'). Retention figures (10 years / 24 months) appear in the EEA/region-specific disclosures. Do-not-sell metrics cover Jan.–Dec. 2025. The arbitration opt-out search returned no opt-out clause in the USA terms. Auto-renew score is low because K-C is not a subscription business (no paid subscription terms found on consumer brand sites); its loyalty programs (e.g., Huggies Rewards+) are free.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.